A 40-minute of deep dive into Servo Control Technology in a webinar was brought by Manufacturing Today, and presented by Husky Injection Molding Systems Ltd.
After a brief introduction and welcome by Hafeez Shaikh, Business Head, Manufacturing Today, the webinar was opened for presentation by Rajen Kasi, Vice President, South Asia – Hot Runners and Controllers – Husky Injection Molding Systems Ltd.
Kasi put forth the subject of his presentation right away- The Altanium Servo Control Overview. Along with him was Balaji Malur, his Senior Technical Manager, stationed at Singapore.
“The industry is moving very fast on mold automation and is searching for speed, precision and quality,” began Kasi, who brings with him 25 years of experience in mold, tooling and processing industry.
The Altanium Servo is a globally successful tooling solution coming from Husky, the makers of industry-leading hot runners and controllers for mold makers, converters and brand owners.
With a vision to be recognised for the highest quality and most reliable hot runners that needed shortest time to market; the company has created a global footprint and has facilities spread over key global manufacturing hubs with standardised engineering and manufacturing processes.
Among its facilities are included the ones at Milton, VT, USA, serving North American market; Dudelange, Luxembourg for European market; Shanghai, China for Asian markets and Chennai for Indian and South East Asian markets.
Husky serves high-performance segment particularly high precision in volume as well as applications. It has global network of support system including production facilities, spare-parts centres, technical centres, service and sales offices and also refurbishment and conversion facilities. This network is spread over the world in Mexico, the USA, South Africa, European countries, the Middle East, China, Japan and South East Asia.
For quite some time now, the industry has been moving away from hydraulics and pneumatics in molding. Rapidly taking their place are the servos that are setting new standards for acutating mold movements. A servo motor is an electromechanical device producing torque and velocity based on the current and voltage supplied to it as monitored and commanded from controller using a feedback device. Among such devices is the Altanium Servo Controller from Husky but it is unique in its interface.
Altanium Servo Control
After the introduction of the company, Kasi touched upon some of Husky’s unique products namely Altanium Servo Control; market leading, servo-driven valve stem actuation UltraSync-E; and a highly precise industry’s top leading Ultra Helix Valve Gate system with the level of gate quality that lasts for millions of cycles.
“Minimising the down-time and improving production time for our customer so that our customer is placed at the top of the industry is the ultimate aim at Husky,” declared Kashi.
He then turned his gaze on to Altenium Servo Control for a detailed presentation. Guiding the audience through a maze of complex concepts in a very simple and lucid manner, Kashi steered a clear understanding of the technology of Altenium Servo Controller (ASC). He explained it by comparison between individual or standard local operations vs ASC, the cost benefits of ASC and the technology aspect of ASC in terms of deisgns and applications.
Temperature controller, servo controller and valve gate controller are the three interface that one has to use in a regular servo. With ASC, instead of having to go through three interfaces, the customer can just connect to one interface of ASC.
Simply put, ASC is the industry’s most integrated control platform for all the mold control needs providing single point access for simple and intuitive operations of temperature control, servo control and valve gate control. All control functions are integrated into one single easy to use operator interface.
“Our ASC technology has been tailor-made for the molding industry,” said Kasi and added that “it is the first fullly integrated servo, valve gate and temperature controller in the market that is globally supported from the start to production.”
“This dependable and flexible approach to controlling many different aspects of the mold provides for solution you can trust. It’s high reliability and superior precision control marks it out from the crowd.”
Compared to a typical hydraulic controlled systems which are complex, difficult to control, filled with contaminates and have energy guzzling low efficiency; a servo is a clear winner with its simple, precision control, clean and energy-saving high efficiency. Aditionally, ASC provides for a globally supported standardised solution, and comes with complete engineering support for sizing and sourcing the correct servo motor or actuator for the application.
The value proposition seemed unbeatable from the way Kasi presented it.
“In medical industries where there is a need for very precise, very accurate, cycle to cycle, part to part, cpk pass; ASC is of course absolutely needed. But, it is also needed in non-medical industries using high-cavity molds,” said Kasi.
Stripper plates, mold closing, spin stack, core pulls and turntables among others are some of the applications he dwelt upon.
Differentiation
Architecture of ASC, configuration of ASC, evaluation by servo evaluation software SERVOsoft, evaluation of compatability of retrofit applications are some of the topics Kasi touched upon. Comparison with competitors’ servo control systems and application supports were among the other points of his focus.
The Husky differentiation where he adressed the ease and speed of integration, the ease of use and performance and the ease of doing business were absolute winners. Scalable integrated solutions, controller re-purposing and global support network were the other points of discourse by Kasi who has held a variety of roles supporting customers and adding value to clients’ manufacturing processes in several countries.
Q&A session
After the insightful presentation, the webinar was thrown open for questions from the attendees. On being asked if one can move actuators from mold to mold, Kasi explained that actuator are a part of the mold, so it can not be moved from mold to mold. Asked if one can use the same actuator on all the molds, Kasi clarified that the actuator is designed keeping in mind the specific needs like for example the force that is wanted. “The needs could be different for different products. So, it depends on the application.”
Can there be a universal controller usable on different molds? How does integration of temperature control with servo controller take place? The questions kept coming thick and thin and were responded with zealous replies from Kasi.